“Oh, I don’t know,” he ruminated. Settled back and thought for a moment.

“I told them stories about Winnie the Pooh and the boy, Baskin Robbins. Sometimes I would just make it up, I mean, he is a bear; you can do a lot with a little bear.”
He thought a bit more, “or I’d tell them the old ones, like when he got his head stuck in a honey jar.”

Ah yes, Winnie the Pooh and Baskin Robbins; the tales of the silly, willy, nilly old bear and 31 original flavors®.

We laughed at ourselves.

We cried and held hands, processing the evolution of our family, from bedtime teddy bear stories to the adults we have become.

They asked about great-grandchildren and admonished me not to die on the upcoming trek. “We only have 9 grand-kids, we don’t have one to spare!”

The man worries about the risks I take.

Promising to do my best, “and won’t you be proud when I DO complete this hike?” I asked.

“If you are doing this just to make us proud, you don’t have to!” he replied, “we are always proud of each and all of you.”

He recalled being a small boy, riding in-between the seats with his parents before the era of car-seats and seat-belt laws. Looking out the window, up to the skies, an airplane flying overhead.
“You’d be proud if I was piloting that plane, huh?” the tiny boy asked his mother.
Even 70 years later, a tenderness filled this Aggie’s tone as he recalled the moment. “She told me, ‘I’d be just as proud if you were driving this truck.'”

[He became a scientist and member of a team who patented a new kind of plastic for Phillips 66]

We ate fried catfish and chicken steak larger than our faces.
I showed them a few tricks for using a smartremedial-phone. Took an usie and headed back up into my mountains.